Naperville School Mascot Causes Flap

December 23, 1990|By Michael Martinez.

Her peers cheered wildly at the pep rally scalping of an Indian, but Wabigonence White wasn`t laughing.

A Native American whose family left a Wisconsin reservation about four years ago, 17-year-old White found the skit a cruel stereotype of her heritage. She felt stung when her school`s mascot, the Naperville North High School husky, ravaged the Redskin of crosstown rival Naperville Central.

``They really cheered when that husky beat up that Redskin and scalped him,`` White said. ``I wanted to leave. Everyone thought it was fun. I didn`t stand, cheer, clap or anything. I told my mom and dad when I got home that I was upset by it.``

White`s humiliation last October is the kind of incident that a group of American Indians is using in seeking the removal of the school`s mascot. They say the word ``Redskin`` itself is a racial slur, and the buckskinned mascot dancing on the sidelines makes a mockery out of the Native American culture and its religious rituals.

Despite their protests, the mascot won`t be changing, school officials said.

``They`re a caricature of Indian people,`` said Wabigonence`s father, Dennis White, 43, an Ojibwa (or Chippewa) Indian who moved his family from his tribe`s reservation in Hayward, Wis., in 1987. He had taught mathematics to reservation schoolchildren, and he now works at Bell Laboratories in Naperville developing software. ``They should change it,`` he said.

The opposing response by many students, teachers and parents at Naperville Central resembles that of other schools nationwide whose Indian mascot has been targeted by Native American activists. Mascot supporters say they find nothing offensive about the Redskin and call it a symbol of pride, dignity, strength, honor.

Principal Tom Paulsen said his school presents the mascot tastefully-whether as a costumed student at athletic contests or in an artist`s rendering on a logo.

``We do not portray it in a derogatory way,`` he said. ``We feel it is appropriate.``

The Naperville Central controversy parallels the arguments of last year`s dispute over the University of Illinois` Indian mascot, Chief Illiniwek, which Indian activists failed to change.

James Yellowbank, coordinator of the Indian Treaty Rights Committee in Chicago, was among the Indian leaders protesting the Chief Illiniwek mascot and is now helping lead the protest against Naperville Central.

He said the effort to abolish Indian mascots has had mixed success.

The Niles high school district board voted against changing the Indian mascot for Niles West in early 1989, but Stanford University and Dartmouth College dropped the Indian as their mascot in the 1970s. Faith Smith, president of the Native American Educational Services College in Chicago, added that several Minnesota schools have dropped mascots relating to the Indian.

Smith and Yellowbank began meeting with Naperville school officials and students this fall when they were contacted by a resident, Andrea Nott, a 37- year-old software engineer at Bell Laboratories and a co-worker of Dennis White.

Nott, who said a family legend holds that Mohawks are among her ancestors, began the protest after viewing a recent television program featuring Yellowbank. She lives five houses away from Naperville Central and decided to do something after driving by the Redskin portrait every day outside the football stadium.

Nott said she found the mascot demeaning and sacrilegious toward Native Americans, especially when a youth dresses as a war-whooping Indian chief, waving a tomahawk during football games.

Yellowbank agreed: ``The San Diego Padres don`t have a padre go out and do communion during the 7th inning stretch. . . . It portrays us as something less than human beings.``

Said Smith: ``The Indians were stereotyped as noble savages with dignity, strength and power. So a number of schools adopted them as symbols and not real people, and it never got challenged until today. Racism is so insidious that people do it without knowing they do it.``

Yet the Redskins will stay. ``I would say it`s not even teetering. I mean there`s talk, but it`s firmly in place,`` Paulsen said.

The executive board of Naperville Central`s booster club, comprised of parents, found nothing offensive in the mascot and rejected the notion of a mascot change earlier this month, said athletic director Ross Truemper, a member of the board who favors the mascot.

``Our phones have been ringing and people in town are saying we don`t want to lose this,`` Truemper said. ``The symbol doesn`t stand because it`s demeaning to someone, it`s racist or we`re trying to put our finger on someone. It represents good things and a lot of proud things.``